Using a clever rotation mechanic, Fez marries 2D platforming to a 3D world in …

It's hard to think of an indie game that has had more prerelease buzz and attention than Fez. Polytron's Phil Fish has been working on the game for nearly five years now, teasing fans with trailers and small trade show demos as he constantly put off planned release dates to perfect it just a little more. The game that is finally seeing the light of day today shows the care that went into creating a world full of hidden depths, but some players might find those depths a little too well-hidden.

Fez

Fez starts off like a standard 2D puzzle platformer, with a retro-influenced, pixelated art style brimming with detailed backgrounds. Soon after the game starts, though, your protagonist gets a hold of a magical fez that grants him the ability to rotate the world along its vertical axis, showing the previous 2D viewpoint as merely one face of a 3D, cubic world. As one character says near the start of the game, "Reality is perception, perception is subjective."

It's a bit mind-bending at first, but it's incredible how easily you can build an accurate 3D model of a space in your head simply by watching how the 2D projections rotate into place. The shift in perspective rearranges the scenery and platforms in a way that often shortens previously impossible jumps or lets you traverse long distances quickly. Later on you'll end up rotating the world at certain pivot points to raise or lower certain platforms, or to push a platform into a new alignment that's more useful in another perspective.

Rotation is the key to almost all of the game's puzzles and platforming challenges, many of which tend a little toward the obvious side. A simple guess-and-check traversal of all the possible rotation options is often enough to find the path you need to the next door, or to the yellow cube-shards you're tasked with collecting. But there are also puzzles that require you to remap the way you think about the nature of perspective, by taking objects that seem utterly disconnected from one point of view and matching them up in another. To give just one simple example, three sequential sections of ladder on three separate pillars can become a single ladder hanging off the side of a single pillar with a bit of careful planning and rotation.

Fez Trailer

Then there are the many puzzles that I felt I could solve only if I was a mind reader with a direct connection to Phil Fish. Fez is not the kind of game that holds your hand and lays out the exact steps to finish its most frustrating puzzles. Instead, it frequently throws you into rooms festooned with obscure symbology and cryptic pixel-art wall drawings, challenging you to figure out what exactly it wants from you.

Sometimes the answer is relatively clear, as in one puzzle where I had to arrange blocks in a specific three-dimensional pattern so that the view from each perspective matches the 2D pattern shown on the wall. In others, I found that my interpreting skills simply weren't up to the challenge. One particularly frustrating puzzle featured a bell adorned with a different obscure symbol on each side, which you can ring by pushing it from any angle. I literally banged my character's head against that wall for a good half hour, trying every possible interpretation of those symbols I could think of with no apparent effect. It's like I was trapped in The Legend of Zelda's Lost Woods, but there was no helpful old man nearby to simply tell me the correct path (or if there was, he was well-hidden).

After a few hours of enjoyable, mind-teasing play, I quickly reached a point of diminishing returns, where every new potential path I wanted to explore seemed cut off by my inability to figure out some inscrutable puzzle or another. This meant spending a lot of time fruitlessly working my way back to old rooms, which in turn meant struggling to rediscover the precise path that led to those rooms. (Warp zones scattered around the sprawling world helped on this score. An incredibly hard-to-read map screen did not.) Occasionally I'd stumble onto some new way of looking at things that made the solution clear, but more often I'd simply end up jumping and rotating around a room fruitlessly, looking for a door that simply refused to appear.

The use of careful lighting to convey depth on the 2D perspectives is often breathtaking

Microsoft

Despite the lack of progress, though, I kept at these frustrating puzzles for longer than I would have expected, driven by a desire to see what kind of unique art style and ethereal chiptune music the next area would bring. Each room is filled with aesthetic touches that tie it together with its surroundings, and the subtle lighting effects make even the 2D views pop with depth.

All in all, though, I felt my progress through Fez went from enjoyable to impossible much too abruptly. Players with better code-breaking and observational skills than I have might sail right past that wall and plumb all of the game's substantial secrets. Even those that don't, though, will probably find themselves looking at the world a little differently after their time with Fez, wondering what a new perspective might reveal about the world around them.

Good

Clever core mechanic that makes 2D perspectives part of a larger 3D world.

Plenty of puzzles that make you look at the world in a different way.

Gorgeous environments with strong aesthetic cohesiveness.

The bad

Many inscrutable puzzles that require a degree in codebreaking to figure out.

Easy to lose your bearings when backtracking to previously played areas.

The Ugly

An overly floaty jump that requires too much forward momentum to make what should be simple leaps.

After attending PAX, I have a new respect and special place in my heart for indie games. After picking up Kill All Robots and enjoying the co-op in that game, I look forward to playing this when I have the change. As long as the controls are not like Q*bert and how the character moves in a 3D space, I will be satisfied.

I don't get how it's an 'indie' game if Microsoft funds its development unless I misunderstand all this XBLA business?

Microsoft provides a platform through which it can be released that has a lot of eyes on it (Xbox Live). Microsoft might do some advertising, usually limited at MOST (usually a lot less) to putting a little something on the front page of the Xbox live screen. For this, Microsoft takes a share of the profits and gives the rest to you. Microsoft DOESN'T pay anything for the development. They just sell it for you.

In cases like this, Microsoft is like a digital Gamestop that doesn't sell used games, really.

From the review I would've expected a "rent" rating. I realize that that is not possible with an XBLA game, so is that the only reason it didn't get that verdict?

I believe the ratings are actually "Buy It", "Try It", or "Skip It"

So in this case it would be fine to put a "Try It" if it was that because XBLA lets you download trials for every game.

It seemed like Kyle's only real complaint was in regards to his own abilities to be honest. I'll be picking this up as soon as I get home. It looks really cool, I like that style of gameplay, and the music is awesome.

Get other contestants banned from an Indie game contest for having the xbla cert and then go on to win said contest with an unreleased, unplayed game with and xbla cert. It looks neat but I can't support such behavior in a game dev.

You can "beat" the game with only yellow (platforming) cubes. Yes the anti-cube puzzles are MUCH harder and take a lot of observation and a bit of note taking as well but i don't think that should be a reason to mark the game down.

The game essentially has a language all its own and once you decipher it the puzzles are much easier to comprehend.

edit: Holy shit yes its for xbox only right now...if you don't have an xbox or want it for pc why even comment? What are you adding to the conversation?

I don't get how it's an 'indie' game if Microsoft funds its development unless I misunderstand all this XBLA business?

It is an indie game, there's no publisher, or Polytron self-publishes it.

You can't work without a publisher on XBLA. That's why it's easier to get games onto PSN, Steam, etc.

"Q: I am an unsigned developer and have developed an Xbox 360 game. How can I submit it to Microsoft for distribution?A: In order to distribute your game on either Xbox 360 retail disc or Xbox LIVE Arcade ("XBLA"), you need to work with a licensed publisher. If you would like to submit your game to Microsoft Studios for publishing evaluation, please review the page at (...)"

The game was developed almost exclusively by a single developer (Phil Fish), over the course of more than 5 years, so it is by all means an indie game! The game & developer were featured in "Indie Game: The Movie." I highly recommend checking it out if it comes to a city near you; or wait for the digital/disc release later this year.

I can think of several indie games that received more pre-release buzz than Fez. All the ones I actually heard about before their release, for example.

The Developer was featured in "Indie Game:The Movie." How many games are featured in a movie before release? Plus, it's been in development for the longest time and received many awards. Just because you live in a cave doesn't mean that there was no pre-release buzz.

That said... I'm not sure how far you got Kyle- I'm nearing 100%. The puzzles later on get INCREDIBLE! My favorite zone so far is what I call the "Gameboy Zone." If you've been there, you know what I'm talking about. I still haven't figured out the language, and I"m kind of glad for that. It makes things far more challenging and far more rewarding once I finally figure out what the heck they're trying to say.

It's incredible what the game does with 3 buttons. (LT, RT, Jump.) If you own an Xbox... this is a must buy.

I'm supposedly about halfway through after playing for a number of hours last night, but I think that Fez would be a lot more enjoyable if its world map allowed direct transport. Or heck, even if it showed a screenshot showing which door corresponded to which previously-visited passage. Backtracking in this game is really not fun. (Or maybe I'm too stupid to understand how to read the world map. The game beats you over the head with "Press X to open a chest" all the time but doesn't explain the map mechanics.)

Edit: Okay, I think that I get the world map now, but I still hate it. Even doing something simple such as labeling north on the map and in-game would make it more understandable.

But I still think direct teleportation would be nice (even if, say, it were bonus functionality enabled after beating the game).

Instead, it frequently throws you into rooms festooned with obscure symbology and cryptic pixel-art wall drawings, challenging you to figure out what exactly it wants from you.

All these symbols have directly translateable meanings to someone who has discovered and solved certain other puzzles. This game should be played with an "Explorer" mind set. There are some places where things are a bit more difficult than necessary but I don't think the game has any unrealistic expectations. I can understand the sense of frustration that a player could encounter at a certain point, but if you get frustrated, explore somewhere else. You can complete the core part of the game without doing anything fancy.

The hieroglyphs and "tetris" codes are just icing on the cake and provide a great sense of depth and accomplishment for those who solve them.

The game at a certain point definitely becomes something targeted at a certain audience. I get frustrated playing games like Super Meat Boy where I know what to do but just fail until my hands decide to behave. But in this game I can spend an hour deciphering an alphabet and have a great time.

In the end: play this game, it is worth $10 and we need more games like this. Enjoy the experience of the world and don't get caught up on things you don't understand. If you've explored everything on the world map and don't know what to do then look at the game faqs forums people there are great at giving you just enough information to make progress without spoiling the actual puzzle.

Man this game hooked me this weekend. I've gotten to the last puzzle that (as of this comment) 99% of people haven't solved yet and enjoyed every second.

I think the review is a bit harsh on the puzzles of the game, you know, being a puzzle platformer and all. You can beat the game the first time with only good platforming skills, which was a good experience, if short. However, to *really* beat the game and see the best/coolest content in the game, you'll need to keep your eyes open and be sharp and experimental. The coolest room in probably any video game is well past where most people will get when playing this game.

This game demands your attention, and if you don't give it your attention, you'll miss out on one of the best games of the year. If you're the kind of person who gets excited when you pull out that piece of paper for notes during a video game, this game is for you. If you don't enjoy figuring out what that obscure symbol means, and just want a good platformer, look elsewhere. If you stood on Braid's 2 hour platform for a star, go buy Fez now.

I don't really understand the complaint about the map. It seemed fairly intuitive. Yes, it took a little bit of poking around to see how the map worked, but it got fairly self explanitory as you got further in. The game puts a warp back to the main hub for about every path you can take, so backtracking was hardly an issue. Also, on your New Game+, they add some 'cheats' to help you transverse paths that took a while your first time through if the platforming gets tedious.

I loved this game, even through all the technical glitches that it had (framerate hitches, a couple crashes to the XBL guide), it was worth it. Heck, the framerate hitches added nostalgia a la NES slowdown.

Kyle Orland / Kyle is the Senior Gaming Editor at Ars Technica, specializing in video game hardware and software. He has journalism and computer science degrees from University of Maryland. He is based in Pittsburgh, PA.